


Possession

by jonnimir



Series: Kinktober 2018 [23]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canonical disturbing shit, Excessive Drinking, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Masturbation, More sad than sexy tbh, Pining, Post-Episode: s03e07 Digestivo, Scars, Sexualizing non-sexual violence, self-destructive thoughts, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 00:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17887814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonnimir/pseuds/jonnimir
Summary: Kinktober Day 23: Scars.It was always Hannibal who tore him apart and pieced him together again. His mind. His body. Removing a bullet and stitching the wound only to cut open his skull the next minute. Selfish gestures. Possessive. Like Will was only truly of worth once he had been crafted by Hannibal himself, chiseled and chipped away, smothered and reborn; like Hannibal had laid claim to him through his manipulations, and he would do as he pleased with him.





	Possession

**Author's Note:**

> I was kind of wavering on a "graphic depictions of violence" tag, but ultimately there's no violence here that's not in canon, and it's not very gory imo. Just weirdly eroticized. And increasingly angsty.

It wasn’t that Will had been free of scars before—he’d had plenty, large and small, before Hannibal had ever touched him. But even the largest that came before him, an old stab wound on his right shoulder that left him with a permanently damaged rotator cuff, seemed insignificant next to all the scars he had accumulated in more recent history.

First there was the shot from Jack Crawford. On his left shoulder, this time, the scar fresher and heavily ridged. It reminded him of that burst of clarity, that moment when he had _known_ , when he had _seen_ for the very first time. It reminded him of Hannibal’s face covered with shadow and eclipsed by the monster from his dreams, gaunt and antlered. Jack had pulled the trigger, but it was the stamp of Hannibal’s victory at the time. It was a poignant reminder of all the pain and betrayal he had felt that night, but it was necessary. For a while, it made his anger feel more justified. It marked a point in his life after which he was never the same again.

Then his knuckles, torn and bloodied by beating Randall Tier to death. He hadn’t even felt it, at the time, too filled with adrenaline. The faint marks that were left brought him a different memory: the way Hannibal had cleaned his raw, bloodied skin, soaked the scrapes in Epsom salts, and bandaged him. His hands were as deft and practiced as a doctor, yet surprisingly gentle, almost reverent. Will imagined, sometimes, that the softness of Hannibal’s hands was followed by the press of lips, because he had always had the impression that Hannibal had wanted to kiss his knuckles that night. It was a thought so bittersweet that he would later try to dismiss it entirely, trying to reframe that encounter as a manipulation, as anything other than the intimacy it had been. But occasionally he would glimpse that shine on his knuckles, and Hannibal’s fingers and lips were brought back to him.

Then the knife. That arc of steel that made blood spill from his belly like a waterfall, and tempted his guts to follow. It was the largest of his scars, and when he was released from the hospital and it was still fresh and pink, it felt like a living thing had burrowed into him. It hurt, but not as much as the memory did.  _You were supposed to leave_.

That action, too, had been intimate, no matter the violence and the pain. Hannibal had gotten inside him, rearranged his insides, and left an indelible mark. Will knew nobody could touch him there again without him thinking of Hannibal, and how he had changed Will irrevocably.

Chiyoh’s bullet was next, again in his right shoulder, layering scar tissue on top of scar tissue. Shot in defense of Hannibal. Followed, shortly after, by something that he had only learned later was a bone saw. His own memory of it was blurred, buzzing and cold and heavy, shapes distorted in his field of vision. It was strange to him that this vicious streak on his forehead, the most brazen of his scars, was one he could barely remember receiving. When he later realized how bad the scarring would be, he had a sudden urge to smash the mirror. Clothing wouldn’t cover up this one—Hannibal’s mark would stay visible no matter where he was. Will would carry him everywhere.

But at a certain point, Will missed him. After the court case was over, the sentencing, everything Will was technically obligated to attend; after watching Hannibal in chains, captive and bound in a way he never should have been; after avoiding his eyes for the entirety of the case, letting himself turn to stone like he did when he himself was on trial; once the afterimage of him had faded and it was just old memories, replayed images, everything too faint, too far—he missed him.

He tried his best to ignore that fact and force the scars and the memories as far from his mind as he could. But they were always there, whether facing him in the mirror or creeping up in his dreams and ambushing his mind when it wandered. He couldn’t escape those things forever, and it took him a while to realize that whiskey made it all worse, not better.

But before that particular realization, there was a night that he’d consumed an awful lot of it, after his dogs had all been fed and he’d mixed up some kind of stew for himself with too much onion, leaving a sour aftertaste in his mouth. He wished, not for the first time, that he had a better knack for cooking. He thought about how Hannibal was the best cook he had ever known. He thought, briefly, of the night he had acted as sous chef for Hannibal, and wondered if that could have become a common routine for them, in another life.

Then he started drinking, and he didn’t stop until he was left dazed and sprawled in bed in his underwear and a thin t-shirt, watching the ceiling rotate in the darkness.

His hand tugged at the hem of his shirt absently and lazily, following the threads that bound it. There were some good memories that floated up, old memories that came with a hint of arousal. Memories of when it was another person tugging at his shirt, then palming over his cock. Of when there was a bit less whiskey, but enough that the taste and the heaviness of his body felt similar, enough that he had been less anxious than he was curious and wanting, with his skin sensitive to each kiss and caress.

His hand ran under his shirt, not mindful of more recent memories, and found the crescent scar. He stopped immediately, but only for a moment. Then he dragged a finger softly across its entire length. It felt strange to touch it like this—whiskey-laden, fingers seeming to spark against the boundary between dead and living skin that was strangely sensitive compared to the rest of his stomach. The scar felt like it was frozen in time, even as the skin around it changed with the months that passed. He could almost imagine the knife was still embedded there, still furrowing his flesh, and the reason he couldn’t feel the scar tissue was because it was steel, not skin.

And that made him think of the incision itself. It had hurt, of course, but the worst part was the shock of it. Like a punch to his guts.

One hand smoothing across his cheek, intimate, sweet, before bracing at the back of his head, holding him in place as Hannibal forced his blade in. Dragging knuckles tight against Will’s stomach as he split him open, as if it was his hand entering him rather than a knife. Reaching through his skin, tearing into him until he felt like he was just a wound, a loose jumble of organs and flesh, shivering with Hannibal’s hand inside him, and Hannibal’s warm beating chest at his front…

He groaned in discontent and flopped to the side. Whiskey was a bad decision. Crossing wires that really shouldn’t be crossed, taking advantage of his loneliness. Mixing up the sexual frustration born of solitude with one of the most intimately violent things he had experienced.

But he didn’t have the self-restraint to stop before his palm moved down to his cock, casually curious. He wasn’t actually hard, and it would probably take some work to get him there, as drunk as he was. But he squeezed through his underwear anyway, massaged it, let his mind wander to some more conventional fantasies—before they were interrupted, again, by the memory of the knife, and of Hannibal’s hands. How he had clutched Will tightly afterward so he wouldn’t unravel entirely, wouldn’t fall apart before he was meant to.

It was always Hannibal who tore him apart and pieced him together again. His mind. His body. Removing a bullet and stitching the wound only to cut open his skull the next minute. Selfish gestures. Possessive. Like Will was only truly of worth once he had been crafted by Hannibal himself, chiseled and chipped away, smothered and reborn; like Hannibal had laid claim to him through his manipulations, and he would do as he pleased with him. Build him up. Burn him down. Cut him loose, once his monster seemed to turn against him.

_His_. If Will hadn’t been his from the beginning, he was now. No part of him left that didn’t feel marked by Hannibal, whether physically or metaphysically.

His stomach. He rubbed his fingers across the long curved scar and felt the small bulge of his belly, the result of overindulging in drink one too many times to forget how that scar got there. _Hannibal’s_.

His chest, his shoulders. His fingers found so many scars there. A knife and two bullet wounds, one more elegant in its shape—the result of Hannibal’s careful stitching, even though he believed Will would soon be dead. As if his corpse deserved only the best. A memory that made his heart feel weak, his ribs feel cracked; crushing him, inundating him. An overburdened vessel, sprung one too many leaks because scar tissue wasn’t tough enough to hold in the all that pain. _Hannibal’s_.

His throat—he moved too quickly. Heart jumping too powerfully, terrifyingly when his fingers closed around it now. There were only fragments, but it was enough. Pressure, choking. His throat’s desperate attempt to expel a tube that was far too large. The motion of a hand soothing it to swallow. The ghost of tears brimming from his gag reflex. Too much, far too much. _Hannibal’s_.

Now his jaw, his cheek, palm brushing over stubble. Hannibal had not wounded him there, but his touch had fallen there enough to linger. The curls at the nape of his neck where Hannibal had secured his fingers, drawing Will forward to drink tepid water after he was shot. A broad swath of hair Will didn’t remember him touching, but often wondered if he had, when he was asleep or delirious from fever dreams, when he was sedated in Florence, or fallen asleep after Muskrat Farm. The tough ropey scar across his forehead—Hannibal's plan to consume that intimate part of him, the organ not yet conquered yet most altered by his hand, a coveted wasteland guarded by bone. _Hannibal’s_ , always Hannibal’s.

He groaned again, took a fistful of hair in his hand. It hurt slightly when he tugged, and he half-wanted to tear, to feel something sharper than the dull memories of old pains, or old memories reawakened and throbbing. He thought, with a lurch in his stomach, that Hannibal might not like it at all if Will was to tear out the hairs and leave his head patchy and ugly. Wouldn’t like Will destroying what was _his_. He thought of Hannibal putting his hand in his hair instead, and how he might be rough, but not enough to tear. Thought of him yanking his head back and pressing his lips to his throat, the same throat that he had forced to accept a tube when Will was unconscious and unwilling. And that should have made him angry, or frightened, or _anything_ other than aroused, but _god_. He panted and arched his neck back further, offering it to this phantom. And he took his other hand and shoved it beneath the band of his underwear, closed it around his cock and stroked it. It was dry, it almost hurt.

He wondered if Hannibal would like it that way. He was a sadist, Will reminded himself. His grotesque displays weren’t purely aesthetic; they were crafted from screams and wounds that bled too long while the person still lived, organs ripped from living bodies. Hannibal found something beautiful about that, something that satisfied him more than if he’d taken pleasure from them sexually. Perhaps he wouldn’t be interested in Will’s cock as much for its sexual value as for the way it could make him squirm and bring him to his knees if mistreated.

He squeezed harder, pulled more roughly. _I’m not doing it for him_ , he told himself. But that defense was altogether too weak and the evidence against it far too loud—better to simply silence all of his voices, no matter how small or relentless. Because _if he was here_ , because _he’s changed me so much_ , because _it hurts more without him_.

His face was damp. His lungs ached. He wondered what Hannibal was doing, but that wasn’t hard to figure out. It was late at night, and he was restrained to his cell—he would be in his prison bed, staring at the ceiling or else asleep. Will knew exactly where to find him, just like Hannibal wanted. But he couldn’t. He _couldn’t_.

His arousal was fluctuating. His thoughts were a mess and the motion was too harsh to feel good, but he could still imagine Hannibal’s hands on him. He could imagine himself in a room in Hannibal’s mind palace, a prize kept locked in his own cell-within-a-cell—and Hannibal would peek in on him, look down on him. He would see Will in this state and know he’d driven him to this. He’d look on with satisfaction or false concern, or he would simply drift in, replace Will’s hands with his own, soothe him. Hannibal would tell him he knew, after all their time together, exactly how he needed to be hurt, and exactly how to heal him.

_I need you to heal me_ , he thought.

It made sense. The anti-venom could only come from the very source of the blinding pain and necrosis, the same thing that bit him and left its fangs embedded in his wasting skin.

_I need you to hurt me_.

It didn’t feel right, otherwise. Who was he, if not a man bearing injury after injury, battle after battle? Too wounded to bear life without war; some strange conundrum of a human being. How was his body supposed to hold itself together without Hannibal’s picking and prodding, without his hands constantly on Will’s flesh to shape him, mold him?

He thought he heard Hannibal answer his plea: _I know, my dear. I have always known._

No, that couldn't be true. That was too reassuring. Too good, too right. It ached.

He lost track of where he was, what he was doing, where all the mixed signals from his body were actually coming from.

At some point, his hand fell away, too exhausted to continue until he could actually come. If the denial stung, it was lost among all the hurts in his body—past, present, and imagined.

He was so, so tired. But he didn’t know where the boundary was between sleep and waking. Hannibal’s ghost walked between both worlds, intruding, carrying all his baggage of fear and loss and pain and desire.

He was limp, and still he heard the whisper: _It would have been better with me_.

He couldn’t shake the image of Hannibal sliding between his legs and licking up his thigh. He was too lonely. This was all because he was too lonely.

_You are alone because you are unique._

He was all the more unique because of the damage Hannibal had dealt him. Not suitable for any other companionship.

_You are alone because you are mine._

Night began to fade away and his whole body was shaking. He thought it might be cold, because goosebumps sprung up along his arms. He was too numb to tell, otherwise.

_We are both alone without each other._

He didn’t want to think about Hannibal feeling just as lonely. Fuck him. Fuck him for _everything_.

_If I saw you every day forever, Will…_

He had a splitting headache. He was beginning to become aware of where his drunken thoughts had led him, and guilt started to sink into his pores. This new softness was worse than the sadism he had first imagined—interwoven with all the hurt until he couldn’t see anything straight. He heard Hannibal’s voice as vivid as life, carrying with it the genuine joy when their eyes met for the first time in so long at the Uffizi. It had felt like a missing part of him fell back into place, and it was bittersweet, feeling such profound connection yet knowing their stars were crossed. Knowing he had to gouge that part out to save himself.

Well, he had. More or less, no matter how much the raw wound still throbbed. Because now that part of him was gone, again, and all he had left were the scars.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this angst fest! You can find me on tumblr as ethicsbecomeaesthetics, and if you like my fics and are interested in having me write one for you, check out [this page](https://fth2019offerings.dreamwidth.org/125514.html) for info on bidding on me in a charity auction running Feb. 26-March 1. The bidder chooses a charity from my selection - I focused mostly on LGBT and immigrant rights. Completely non-profit.


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